New Media

It’s a whole new year — well, more than halfway through the first month of it, anyway, and I’m overdue for laying out my nefarious plan for 2012. OK, here goes.

• Get my new pulp detective/sci-fi/horror novel published. Yes, I’m still going to self-publish this baby in the meantime, since it’s so darn fast and easy to do it now using Amazon. But it would be nice to get an actual dead tree publisher on board with the project before all of the dead tree publishers are pushed into bankruptcy by eBooks.
• Write another novel by the end of June. It really seems like I’ve got the hang of this thing, now. Once I get going, I can write 10-15 pages of fiction at a clip. It seems reasonable to figure that I can bang out another 300 pages of awesomeness by the middle of summer, particularly since I’ve already got a pretty good outline for it — but again, I must actually devote some time to selling the damn things.
• Boost my website copywriting business by 50 percent. I’m going to need to devote more time to business development. That means more marketing, networking, maybe some ad buys — We’ll see. Business has been good; I just want to see how hard I can push it before the Euro-crisis turns us all into dirt farmers again.
• More political writing. That means returning to the fun of writing full-on op-eds on The Propagandist. Also, finding others pundits who want to share the space with me and shout from the digital soapbox.
• Starting another blog or three. These would be fun projects that would help market my creative writing, besides just being cool in their own right. I’ll plug them when they launch.
• Recording some more podcasts with my fellow awesome nerd, Shane Birley, along with other awesome nerds.
• Continue to help organize the Northern Voice personal blogging conference. I like where it’s going.
• Continue writers meetups every Sunday afternoon.
• Continue to play the Savage Worlds RPG every Tuesday. It’s not just downtime with beer — I find these sessions also help inspire my creative writing projects.

So… given time constraints, how will I achieve all of this? Well, I’m certainly not going to work much longer hours. That’s just not sustainable. I know myself too well. I’ll burn out soon and be back to square one. An extra hour a day of work, tops.

Mostly, I just need to use my time more effectively. I can definitely give up some of the time I currently spend zoning out scanning my Google Reader feeds or seeing what’s new on YouTube. This alone will add about an hour a day for me — not a small amount of time (Just think of what you could accomplish in 365 hours). Video games are also to be cut out of my life — I hadn’t been playing them much anyway, but now that’s getting slashed to zero. And that’s it — presto, I’m that much more creative and awesome than I was before.

Coolness.

Some highlights of my vacation in New York City so far:

1. Not getting deported immediately upon arrival at JFK. I thought I lost my passport and scrambled to find it for 5 minutes (It was in my backpack).
2. A slice of pizza from the restaurant where Peter Parker worked as a delivery guy before pursuing a different career as a superhero.
3. Eating octopus in the Greek neighborhood of Astoria in Queens.
4. Walking over the Brooklyn Bridge.
5. Pints of various Brooklyn beverages during happy hour. $3 a beer? Seriously.

I’ll be meeting some fellow propagandists tomorrow, taking part in a writing meetup and checking out “Occupy Wall Street” (For those who know me well and are asking themselves, “what took you so long?”, all I can say is politics and headline news have been on the back burner for this trip). I’m looking forward to actually hanging out with some cool locals.

If you’re a New York-based blogger, political pundit, social media nerd or related sort of creative type, please do feel free to get in touch while I’m here. Cheers.

Blogger sues other blogger for defamation.

Judge orders plaintiff to pay defendant’s costs.

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves

Combining my two great interests, politics and social media, I’ll be speaking at the Northern Voice personal blogging and social media conference happening in Vancouver on May 14. My topic? Political Propaganda 101. Here’s an excerpt of my synopsis:

The best political blogs don’t just deal with compelling stories. They inject personal observations. They have an unconcealed political agenda. Succeeding at this means being fearless and showing your passion.

This talk will use three blog posts sprouting from personal experiences as case studies of how to put passion, bold arguments and hard-boiled agenda-pushing into your political blog in a way that forces readers to respond.

Buy your ticket to Northern Voice today

If you’re a blogger and you use checklists, then you might want to check out my… blogging checklist.